St. Paul nonprofit builds understanding one stage at a time

Juniper Welch said that at first she had no idea who all the new cast members sharing the stage with her and fellow students of St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists were.

But it didn’t take long for them to be impressed with their counterparts from Interact Theater, a St. Paul nonprofit dedicated to building arts opportunities for people with disabilities.

“It’s been really nice to get to know them,” said Helen Glamm, an 11th-grader. “They’ve been great.”

Consider it a mission accomplished for Interact Center for the Visual and Performing Arts. Since 1996, the organization has been dedicated to challenging “perceptions of disability” with its cadre of more than 100 performing and visual artists.

This new collaboration with St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists resulted in three January performances of “Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano” at Hamline University’s Anne Simley Theatre. Interact artists were not only in the cast, but created art used on the stage.

The play is set during the closing days of Weimar Republic in Germany just before the rise of Hitler, whose regime rounded up, detained and eventually killed millions of people — Jews, people with disabilities, homosexuals and others derided as different.

“It’s about artists in a really dangerous period,” said Joseph Price, Interact’s executive director, who said he attended every rehearsal.

Cast member Michael Wolfe, at Interact since 2011, said he learned about World War I and World War II in high school, but never knew about the Weimar Republic.

Wolfe said he appreciated that director Jon Ferguson allowed the actors to come up with their own lines. A stage manager would then take notes of the improv and it became the script.

Price said Wolfe did a five-minute improvised speech about soldiers. “It was beautiful,” he said.

Said Wolfe: “Instead of memorizing a bunch of lines, all I had to do was speak from the heart.”

Ferguson said during the Weimar Republic, from November 1918 to March 1933, there was “this incredible arts movement happening. Really vibrant, wild, expressionistic theater, absurdist cubist paintings and these amazing cabarets.”

The play explores that — and the foreboding of the darkness to come. Adam Levy, a local musician and a teacher at the Conservatory, helped performers better understand the historical setting.

“I would say that the score, the music, were trying to kind of hint at the darkness while celebrating this period, which was really vibrant,” Levy said. “And, you know, queer folks were really contributing a lot to the culture. There’s lots of cross dressing, and it’s a really experimental cultural period.”

Ferguson said blending a cast from both theaters was one of the most exciting parts of the project.

“I’ve worked with Interact before, and so I have some practice with working with them and learning how to work with them and getting to know them a bit,” he said. “And I was so excited about the students getting a chance to be in that space. There are some beautiful moments in the show.”

“I just think it’s really wonderful the students have had this experience now,” he added. “In the future, they might say ‘Oh, I’ve done that, and there’s richness there. Those people are incredible. They’re talented. Their work is valuable.‘”

It was a lesson learned repeatedly during the show’s 15 rehearsals over three weeks, Glamm and Welch said.

“I really enjoyed getting to know each person, and I feel all of us have individually grown a connection,” Glamm said.

Welch said it was “rewarding to work with people outside my school.”

The whole experience was enlightening, Glamm added.

“I learned a lot about collaboration. This was my first time working with disabled actors, and I had to try to figure out a lot of things,” she said. “Some of our cast members have sound sensitivity issues, and I tend to be a very loud person. and, so, just trying to handle that.

“It was all just really amazing.”